Covid-19: Hong Kong faces a record number of contaminations since the start of the pandemic

Dozens of people wait to be tested for Covid-19 in Hong Kong on February 7, 2022. AP - Vincent Yu

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

In Hong Kong, the virus has indeed infiltrated almost everywhere in the territory while the authorities had succeeded until recently in meeting their “zero Covid” objective, renamed “dynamic zero Covid” strategy to adopt the language of Beijing. .

However, the measures imposed by this strategy will very quickly overwhelm the resources available on site.

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With our correspondent in Hong Kong,

Hong Kong recorded 614 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday, an absolute record since the start of the epidemic in January 2020, an epidemic which to date has only killed 213 out of 7.5. millions of inhabitants.

But the counterpart of this undeniable health performance has been an unprecedented isolation of the territory, where it has become

both for passengers and for goods and where schools have been completely or partially closed, heavily affecting families the poorer.

Since the virus crossed the "great wall" deployed at the borders of the territory, the epidemic seems on the verge of truly igniting due to the density and promiscuity in housing and public transport, despite respect absolute lack of wearing on the part of the population, including outdoors.

The real threat is to the elderly, because barely 20% of those over 80 are vaccinated, most of them with the Sinovac vaccine, which is not very effective against the Omicron variant which dominates the current wave.

Hong Kong cannot therefore afford to change its strategy for the moment when it will very quickly no longer have the means for the current strategy which consists of hospitalizing all positive cases and forcibly isolating contact cases.

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• hong kong

• Coronavirus

• Health and medicine